With the front axle bent and the
radiator crushed, the car was safely out of commission.

"We're definitely out of the fight," he reported shortly, helping his
companion down from the driving-seat.

Patricia was still trembling and pale.

"You mean that we can't go on to the city?" she quavered.

"Not unless we walk; and of course that is out of the question."

"Then you--you can't keep your appointment with Judge Hemingway."

Blount's smile was scornful. "I imagine it was no part of my father's
plans that I should keep my appointment," he commented bitterly. "He
took it for granted that I would drive out to Wartrace with you, and
made his preparations accordingly. This tree wasn't here half an hour
ago, and it is here now."

"I can't believe it of him," she denied, and her lip quivered. And then
she added: "Just think, Evan; we might have been killed--both of us!"

Blount's teeth came together with a little clicking noise. "Politics, or
what passes for politics in this God-forsaken region, seems to make no
account of such a small thing as a human life or two," he said. And
then: "I suppose we are due to wait until somebody comes along to pick
us up. It's four miles or more back to the nearest ranch on the mesa."

"It is all my fault!" lamented the young woman. "I--I might have
stopped the car, don't you think?"

"I wondered a little that you didn't at least try to stop it," he
permitted himself to say; and at this she forgot the traditions,
sociological or other, reverting to the type of the eternal feminine.

"Say it all," she flashed out. "You are beginning to wonder if I didn't
do it purposely. I _did_ do it purposely. All the way along I had been
trying to muster up courage enough to smash the car in the ditch, and if
I hadn't been such a coward I would have done it. Now hate me, if you
want to!"

Blount would have been less the lover than he was if he had not been
moved to something much warmer than hatred.

"Let us say that you are doing your level best to save my faith in human
nature, Patricia, girl," he said soberly. "Do you know what you are? You
are the one loyal person in a tricky world. I am still fair enough to
say that it was fine--splendid! And I only wish my father were worthier
of such superb loyalty and affection."

She looked at him curiously for a moment. Then her mood changed in the
twinkling of an eye, and she laughed and said: "Yes, I think women are
more loyal than men; and I a